My DHH Project

Hello all,

Some of you may recall that a while back I started a club for breeding "Dutch Harness Horses", which in E-R are Dutch Warmbloods bred for fine harness. The club is closed now, but I have decided to again start a DHH herd on E-R, but this time at my main ranch, The Carousel.

I have many different plans for this herd though. In my old herd, color was my first goal, then movement, and my horses had a lot of local stock influence. This time, I am going to mainly use performance customs to found my herd, and no LS at all. Why? I just want to see how these horses shape up in comparison to my Morgans, who were largely founded on LS blood. I will try for realistic colors(mainly bay, black, chestnut, with roans, sabinos, and tobianos), but they are not of high importance right now.

We look for leggy stock, with good bone, an upright and well shaped neck, a high and proud tail set, and a strong, short topline. As far as temperament, I am not going to be too picky. I don't care if my horses are "hot," they just need to be proud and bold. To start, I am looking for well rounded stock, and eventually I plan to push for energetic, agile horses with phenomenal movement and conformation.

I am going to go about breeding these animals in a different way than I did with my Morgans. I am going to use a lot of self-made calculations to analyze and compare my horses. I mainly will be focusing on show scores in comparison to peak fitness and comparing offspring to parents. I have been using a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the data. I do this with my Morgans too, but to a lesser degree. I will also try and use a grading system on my stallions once I really get going.

I have also got a little naming system for these guys. All of the "foundation horses", meaning the first generation imports, will have a name starting with "A". Next generation will have "B", then "C", then so on. Skipping Q, X, Y, and Z. If a crossing is made with a "C" name sire to a "B" name mare, then the foal will be considered of the oldest generation possible, so a "D" in this case. For another example, a cross of a "L" sire to a "R" dam will have a "S" foal, as s comes after r, the oldest generation. Once I get through the alphabet, we will begin again at "A" but horses will have the roman numeral "I" after their name. And the pattern will continue. If the horse is not bred by me, I will attempt to figure out its letter status.

But enough of the chit-chat, let me introduce you to the "A" foundation horses!

Stallions
Almere
Almelo
risky undertaking - not owned by me

Mares
Aangenaam
A Patchworks Mystery
Roos - my mare, but not named by me

Only 6 horses so far. I hope to get some more imports soon because 6 certainly isn't enough for a good start. I would really love to get a performance custom filly.

We also have three second generation DHHs too!

Begaafd
Booker
Bornerbroek

I am very pleased with these guys already.

Spring of 203 I am hoping to get my 3 "A" mares pregnant!

Thanks for reading!